Let’s be honest, none of us like being told what to do when we’re on the mountain. Slow skiers who crowd up the run frustrate us, patrollers yelling at us when we’re having fun is incredibly annoying, and those slow signs we come across on the easier trails are always a bit of a pain. BUT, if you’re a good skier/snowboarder and, more importantly, a responsible skier/snowboarder, you respect those signs and warnings. Unfortunately, on todays slopes (and probably the slopes of the past as well), there seems to be a few too many people who fail to understand the rules of safety on the mountain.
Marketing students at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, have set out to find ways for resorts to better display and communicate their rules of safety on their own slopes through the Slide with Respect project, and you can help them to find those answers.
“The snowsliding industry has conducted several market segmentation studies to understand purchase behavior at resorts. However, there has been more limited effort to segment safer snowsliding behavior. We suspect that the person in the park needs to be messaged differently from the Sun Belt family that travels to a ski area for a one-week vacation. As an independent body, we will attempt to answer those questions and develop the most effective messaging for industry use.” – Slide With Respect project
The survey, which you should definitely fill out, asks pretty simple questions associated with your age, skiing/snowboarding/snowbiking ability, awareness on the mountain, and awareness of the general safety codes adopted by the “snowsliding” industry (snowsliding is their general term for all activities that include going downhill on snow). All in all, I think this is a pretty cool project for the students to partake in, and it could have a good impact on the industry as a whole! We hear of way too many skier collisions occurring nowadays, and any steps taken to reduce that number are definitely positive steps.
So take the survey! You can, and should, do so here. They’re not going to track you down and arrest you if you’re honest about skiing recklessly too, so BE HONEST!
Featured Image Credit: FACEBOOK/Loveland Ski Area
